Compass Rose

by John Casey

  She didn’t think she said anything, but perhaps she made a sound. Phoebe and Mr. Salviatti looked at her. She put her cup and saucer on the table, pressed her feet to the floor. She decided to go see Elsie and the baby.

  chapter eighteen

  Mary Scanlon’s little pickup had four-wheel drive. When Mary went to work, Elsie was left with her old Volvo, which wasn’t any good in snow. She called Miss Perry’s house and talked to Nancy Tran. Everything was fine. Time for a day off. Just Rose and her.

  She bundled Rose up and went to the new shed. In the jumble of outdoor toys Sally had dropped off there was a plastic sled—just a bowl, really. She put Rose in it and pulled it to the back of the house. She held on to the rope and lowered the sled to the edge of the pond. She walked onto the ice. Thick enough. She pulled the sled halfway up the slope, set Rose in her lap, and slid down. They picked up some speed as they went over the bank and ended up in the middle of the pond, slowly turning.

  “What do you think, Rose? Fun?”

  Rose made noises. She hadn’t said a recognizable word yet, but she’d begun to make noises that seemed to have the rhythm of conversation.

  “So we’ll do it again. From the top. Or shall we just lie here?” Elsie spun them around with her feet, and Rose laughed. Elsie acknowledged laughing but not Mary’s reports of singing or saying words. Elsie was the skeptic and was annoyed at Mary for making her the skeptic. Mary, in addition to singing to Rose, talked baby talk to her. When Mary was around, Elsie found herself speaking in formal complete sentences to Rose. Now that she and Rose were alone, she just opened her mouth and wrapped Rose in whatever came out. “She says she doesn’t like babies. What was that about? Was it just an aftershock?”

  Elsie spun them around again. Rose said, “Ah,” and then higher, “Ah, ah.”

  Elsie said, “Okay. I give in. We’ll call that singing.” Elsie gave another push with her feet. As they spun to face the house, Elsie saw May walk past the station wagon. May disappeared on the other side of the house. Elsie lay still. When she heard May knock on the door, her feet skittered on the snow and the ice, moving the sled a yard or two. More knocking. Elsie turned Rose toward her. She had to twist herself onto her knees to get up. She had no idea; she had a storm of ideas. May reappeared. She might have walked back down the driveway without seeing them. Elsie waved.

  May turned her head and stopped. Then she walked down to the pond. Elsie stood still. May came across the ice, taking small shuffling steps that left a channel in the snow. Elsie had forgotten that May was taller than she. Most of the times Elsie thought of May, May was an invisible presence that came up through her and filled her. This May, in her wool overcoat with a scarf over her head, emptied her.

  May took off a glove and moved the side of Rose’s hood. She stared at Rose’s face. Rose lifted a hand. Elsie took off Rose’s mittens, May touched Rose’s palm, and Rose held on to May’s finger. May bent her head, and it seemed natural to Elsie to lift Rose higher. Perhaps because Rose felt herself being lifted, she turned and raised her arms. May picked her up and began to rock her gently with a little sway of her hips. Rose put her fingers in her mouth and drooled. May made a little noise, as near to a laugh as Rose’s noise had been. May wiped the drool away with her fingers and dried them on her coat without taking her eyes off Rose.

  “You’re a good baby,” May said. “You’re a pretty girl.”

  Elsie said, “It may be time for her bottle. Would you like to come in?”

  May handed Rose back to Elsie and said, “I don’t believe I can just now.”

  “Perhaps another time.”

  May looked up at Elsie’s house, then back at Rose. “Perhaps.” Elsie shifted Rose to her shoulder and dropped Rose’s mitten. May picked it up. She said, “That’s hand-knit.”

  “Yes. Mary Scanlon knits.” May put the mitten on Rose’s hand. Elsie said, “Mary takes care of Rose most mornings. Here and then at Sawtooth. I’m here after five. Unless I’m with Miss Perry.”

  “Yes,” May said. “Miss Perry.”

  Elsie couldn’t tell if May was weighing good deeds against bad or if she was still wondering what it would be like to go into the house. Elsie had no idea what details May might have asked Dick to tell, what pictures came to May’s mind. Now it was just as well they were outside, bundled up in winter coats.

  May said, “I think Dick should see her. I think he should see her over at our house.”

  Elsie took a step back. Then she pretended she was looking for the sled. She bent down and picked up the rope. May said, “Here. You’ll need both hands going up the hill.” May took the rope and led the way, walking in the footprints she’d made. She stopped halfway up and looked at the attached greenhouse.

  Elsie said, “I usually have some greens, but this year …”

  May didn’t say anything. When they reached the driveway, Elsie said, “Did you leave your car down by Miss Perry’s?”

  “I walked. It’s not that far.” May leaned the sled against the side of the house. “You haven’t said anything.” May sounded mild but deliberate. “You haven’t said anything about what I said.”

  “I thought … I would have thought …” Elsie felt herself flustering. She took a breath and said, “I thought it would be better if we kept apart.”

  May put her glove on and folded her hands. “That’d be fine. If it was just about you and Dick.” Elsie felt herself out of time with May’s steady matter-of-factness. She wondered if May knew what it felt like to listen to these long pauses and short sentences. And then she thought that was the way Dick talked.

  “You could keep Rose to yourself,” May said. “Or … Dick could come over here. Least that way Rose would know her father. But then Dick might end up thinking he’s got two families. If Rose comes over to see us, then she’s the one with two families.”

  Elsie made a noise. It sounded like the yip of a dog having a dream. Rose stiffened. May nodded once, as if Elsie had said something conversational. May said, “Charlie and Tom don’t know. They will. It’s getting to be not much of a secret. I expect they’ll be hard on Dick for a while. Course not so hard as if they heard it somewhere else.”

  Elsie hadn’t thought—or hadn’t let herself think—about Charlie and Tom, about Charlie and Tom judging her. She shrank from it. Then she tightened. She felt herself grow sharper. Had May been busy figuring out more ways to make her feel bad?

  She looked at May. May was pulling the ends of her scarf tighter, her eyes on the ground. Whatever energy had brought her up the hill was spent. Elsie didn’t dare imagine the pain and anger May had felt, but she imagined May now. She imagined that May’s short, practical sentences weren’t an attack—they were May’s trying to shift the weight she carried, not that it would be lighter but that there would be some relief if she could carry it differently.

  If Charlie and Tom learned about Rose, they would sympathize with May, and that would be part of May’s relief. Hard on Dick. That might be part of the relief, too. Then Elsie wondered how much further along May imagined all this. Did May see herself and her sons sitting around with Dick as he dandled Rose on his knee? Or did May imagine Rose in her own arms? Did she imagine herself growing fond of Rose? And Rose fond of her? And what about when Rose was six or seven? Summer boating with all the Pierces and Elsie—and Mary Scanlon and Miss Perry, too? Jolly flounder fishing, a birthday party?

  Elsie looked at the black and white of the trees and snow around them, the hard, low sky. She said, “Just how do you see these visits working?”

  May looked up. “Bit by bit. I could get a car seat for Rose. Pick her up one day when Dick’s home. The boys back in school.”

  “I’m afraid Rose would be afraid.”

  May considered this, nodded. “Maybe you or Mary Scanlon. She’s used to Mary, I guess. One of you could come along till she’s used to us.” May shivered and wrapped her arms across her chest. She said, “Dick was good with babies. When the boys were babies. He’s been
a good father. Strict about work, but when they do a good job, he says so.”

  “Work … I don’t think I’ve looked that far into Rose’s future. I’m just trying to fit in next month’s doctor’s appointment.”

  May said, “Dick’s helping with all that—still making a regular contribution?” She said it mildly.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean … Yes, he is.”

  May nodded. She said, “I expect you’ll want to think it over. It’s time for me to get back, anyway.”

  “I wish I could give you a ride. It’s awful cold. I’m just afraid I couldn’t get back up the driveway.”

  “I’ll warm up once I start walking.” May took a few steps and turned around. “Eddie could do your driveway. I know he’s got a couple of his boys out plowing. Or is he still shy about coming onto Miss Perry’s property?”

  “No. I mean yes, he can come up the driveway. You’re right, I should call him.”

  “If he’s out, you can talk to Phoebe Fitzgerald. She’s over at their office now. She gets on a CB and talks to him in his truck. No sense in your being stuck.”

  Elsie watched her until she got past the first turn. It was the last part of the conversation—about Eddie—that lingered. What did it mean that May could just talk to her about the driveway, calm and neighborly? She took Rose inside. Rose began to fuss. Elsie touched her cheeks. They were very cold, probably hurt as they warmed up.

  “I know, Rose, I know. It’ll get better in a minute.”

  She heard her voice, saw her fingers unzipping Rose’s snowsuit. She slid Rose’s arms out of the sleeves, her feet out of the quilted booties and legs. She put Rose into the swing, but Rose fussed. Elsie picked her back up and walked her around the room. When she stopped moving, Rose fussed again. “What’s the story, Rose?” If she’d had a hand free, she would have smacked her forehead. “Oh, yeah. Bottle.”

  They settled on the sofa while Rose sucked on her bottle. Elsie thought she should call Eddie. She should turn on a light. She should stand up and do something or she would sink. She couldn’t bring herself to the phone. The afternoon was nothing but heavy emptiness. It had taken her ten breaths to get to her feet when it was time to feed Rose. Once Rose was asleep, Elsie went to bed half undressed. Whatever there was to be done, whatever she felt, whatever facts there were—all equal. Nothing connected, anything connected.

  chapter nineteen

  Elsie woke up to a clanking and scraping. She went out in her bathrobe and boots. Eddie was plowing the driveway. It turned out Mary had called him. He was sorry to be making a racket this early, but he had to get over to Sawtooth, couldn’t fit the driveway in once he got going with his crew—cold as it was, he had to keep the boys moving.

  Eddie’s good cheer would have weighed her down last evening. She’d barely been able to get Rose in her crib. Now she was hungry and cold but ready to do one thing at a time. She got Rose into the crib in Mary’s room without waking either of them. When she got to the Great Swamp office nobody wanted to go outdoors, so she volunteered to take a tour. She drove back home and got her touring skis.

  She parked on the south side of Worden Pond, saw two ice-fishing huts near the north shore, almost a mile away. Halfway across, she wasn’t having fun. When the wind gusted it almost stopped her, sent cold air up the skirt of her jacket.

  The fishermen had pulled their huts onto the ice with an all-terrain vehicle. The tracks came from the eastern shore, not from the Great Swamp Reservation, and they had their fishing licenses pinned on their hats. Elsie smelled whiskey, figured they were lacing their coffee. Nice old navy retirees, called her “Miss.” Not likely to freeze—they were as round as barrels in their orange snowmobile suits. She recognized one of them when he pulled back his hood to sip from his thermos. “Hello, chief. You the designated driver?” Her face was too stiff from cold to smile, so she added, “Hope you catch a mess of fish.”

  She headed for shore toward the only high ground in the swamp, a drumlin just big enough to break the wind.

  In a cove some wintering-over Canada geese and a couple of ducks had kept a small pool of water free of ice. She wondered again—was it instinct or did they figure out that paddling around kept the water from freezing? Did they take turns? When they flew in their vee, they took turns being the lead goose. They took turns at sentry duty when they were feeding—there was always one with his neck stretched up, swiveling like a periscope, while the others waddled around, beaks to the ground.

  She got off the ice and shuffled along the lee side of the drumlin. She wasn’t getting much glide. If she came back in the tracks she made, she’d sail along. Fun later on.

  She saw rabbit tracks, the paw prints close together on the wind-packed snow. Walking, pausing—nibbling the bush tops? Then the prints were suddenly farther apart, the forepaws overtaken by the hind feet pushing off together. The prints swerved left, then right. Then a hole in the snow. No more tracks. On either side of the shallow hole there were faint ridges—the marks of wing tips. A streak of blood on the broken crust. Owl? Hawk? Night? Day? She looked up the hill. A lot of scrub but some taller trees. An owl or hawk could perch up there, have a good view of the open ground—come down fast.

  She touched the blood. It was frozen into beads—but that could have happened in less than an hour. The wind wasn’t fierce on this side of the hill, but it was still sweeping the loose powder along the crust, would have filled in the tracks if the kill had been last night. Most likely a hawk, though she’d seen owls hunt by day. One fall afternoon—her first year on the job—a great horned owl had followed her, hovering only twenty feet above her head. It had frightened her at first. With its wings at full spread and its face looking down, she saw it against the sky as flat as a painting; only the slightest movements kept it aloft. It didn’t come any closer, and she wondered more calmly what it was doing, began to admire its ease, even had a moment of fairy-tale giddiness—perhaps wild animals sensed her kindred spirit.

  The owl had suddenly swooped into the knee-high grass a stone’s throw ahead of her. When it lumbered up into the air she saw it had a mouse in its talons. After a moment she realized that her walking through the grass had been stirring up whatever was hiding there—any creature that would have been better off staying still. The owl had been using her as its spaniel. So much for her as Saint Francis.

  Then she’d wondered how the owl worked this out. Perhaps one time it had seen a fox or a stray dog trot across a field and noticed the scampering away of a field mouse, chipmunk, or rabbit, or the slithering of a garter snake. The owl had seen her disturbance long before she saw the owl.

  After that she stopped thinking of herself as an unobserved observer. Any patch of ground was web upon web of awareness. Even if she was crouched in the bushes with her binoculars, invisible to other humans, she was giving off body heat sensed by ticks, odors that attracted deer flies. Even the littlest flash of color attracted something—a butterfly once landed on her cheek, perhaps mistaking her bright eyes and dark nostrils for what? Something in the iris family?

  So she was sensed as well as sensing—but for a while she’d kept on thinking of herself as a central-exchange operator and a slow-but-sure decoder of everything. Then, as she read and thought about a hawk’s eyesight, a dog’s nose, a bat’s sonar (which certain moths could feel and then save themselves by folding their wings and plummeting), a goose’s migration (possibly navigated by the earth’s magnetic fields—the jury was still out on that)—she gave up.

  She’d spent some time in anger and frustration at what she wouldn’t ever know. Then some time in a shriven state for having presumed too much. A little comeback—she knew more than most people. But even if true, so what? And at last an easier attitude. It wasn’t her job to know everything but to know enough to let some other people know enough to wonder. Be fierce enough to keep out the vandals. Encourage the teachable—“Be not afraid, the isle is full of noises, / Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.” At least if
you’re higher on the food chain than a rabbit.

  She worked back from the crumpled snow along the trail of zigzag leaps, of creeping and nibbling. Then back to the edge of the woods. The undergrowth was too thick to go through on her skis, but she followed the trail with her eye. A crisscrossing of rabbit tracks in there. Had the senior rabbits claimed the rights to the nearby food and forced junior out into the field? Were rabbits less cooperative than geese? Or was junior just a silly rabbit?

  She’d ask Eddie. He knew more about animals, at least edible animals, than her colleagues. She missed running into Eddie out in the woods. She wondered—was Phoebe Fitzgerald ruining his life or was he happy making his fortune? How odd it had been to see Eddie and Phoebe walk in on her, along with Jack and Mr. Salviatti. And then Jack almost leering about her and Johnny Bienvenue. So everyone got to wonder about odd couples. Eddie surprised her. She’d known him as capable in the woods, almost tongue-tied with most people and thrown into a complete tailspin by Miss Perry, or even the mention of her name. But he’d spoken up to Jack and Mr. Salviatti with assurance, almost in asides, as he looked over the building problem. Phoebe had turned this way and that, and every male but Eddie had taken it in—the willowy sway, the pleated skirt brushing her pretty calves, the wide eyes and slightly parted lips. This would have amused Elsie if she hadn’t noticed a flick of Phoebe’s eyes toward her, a snapshot assessment of Elsie bundled up in sweatpants.

  And yet here she was on a cold winter’s day hoping that Phoebe was preening for Eddie and that Eddie was taking a step forward. Now that she was out of the wind, she was full of goodwill. No question about it, when she was moving around out here she was nicer than she was anywhere else. Unless, of course, she ran into an offender against her territory. Part of it was fresh air, sunlight, maybe endorphins. But most of all it was her eyesight ranging out, going from wide focus to narrow when her eyes lit on a detail that led to another. Another part was more elusive. Once in a great while she was released from figuring things out, from knowing or not knowing, and she felt herself displaced by a wordless humming alertness beyond well-being.